Snapshots of The Darkness
by kelpylion
Summary: Choice scraps from and unfinished year 5 fanfic. Not neccesarily in chronilogical order. More chapters to come! R&R.
1. A Beginning

Two Close Escapes  
  
"A dream-a dream," Harry Potter panted to himself, wiping the cold sweat from his brow. Not that it was any reassurance; the dreams he'd been having all this summer about Voldemort had been real. Horribly, deadly real. He rubbed his scar in confusion. This time, however, the dark wizard's quarry had escaped.Harry gave a slightly victorious smile. In this time of brutal daily massacres, it was a small comfort, but it was something.  
  
"Sirus Black, you were a fool to come after me," a high, cold voice resonated across the dimly lit chamber "And I will kill you just as I killed the precious Potters." Sirius, trapped on the floor in a dusty corner, stalled for time. "You're not going to torture me first?" he spat sarcastically, groping along the smooth stone for his wand. "I know how much you wished you could have heard the screams of the Potters." "And would have enjoyed it," Voldemort drawled as Sirius's hand finally closed over the smooth wood. "But now-" he drew his own wand with a clean motion and whispered the killing curse with an indifference gained only by practice. As the deathly green glow shot toward him like a fatal bullet, the man once known as Padfoot clenched his wand in hand and gasped two words- "Cottage Lupin."  
  
Harry closed his eyes to recall the scene...Voldemort's voice echoed in his head, but his scar, which he had recieved when the Dark Lord Voldemort tried to kill him fourteen years ago, did not begin the all-too- familiar sharp throbbing he felt every time Voldemort killed someone. Sirius was safe, for now.But why had he come after Voldemort alone, why didn't he go with the rest of Dumbledore's 'task force?' Harry would have to wait for his answer; Sirius had asked Harry not to contact him because the Ministry of Magic was on the hunt for him again; he was vague, but Harry gathered that the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, was blaming Sirius for the recent Death Eater attacks. Brushing his disorderly hair away from his face, he gave his scar a last perplexed touch and settled down to his restless dreams until the morning.  
  
"James, please, don't go! He'll kill you!" a red-haired woman cried.  
  
The dark haired man turned around and smiled gravely, pulling his wife into his arms for the last time. "Lily, love,Harry needs you. Now hurry-get away from here before-"  
  
Lily nodded and whispered as they pulled apart: "We will always be each other's. I love you James." She touched the tip of her finger to his and spoke, loudly and clearly, two words. "Patronum Revelum." As she did so, a translucent golden phoenix appeared hovering over her shoulder, a silver one over her husband's. Both glanced at the birds and then at each other, their looks heavy with signifigance.  
  
James Potter, with one last reassuring smile, apparated from the room.  
  
Though quite aware that she aught to be escaping, the silently sobbing woman, child in her arms, could not help but take one last glance down the stairs at her husband. The last she saw of him was the horrified expression on his face and a flash of green light.  
  
As she finally came to her senses and began to run, a soft, renewing, glowing light shone on her face; it came from the pheonix hovering mournfully above her: gold and silver, no longer translucent but fully solid, shimmering with the light of the moon and the stars. Six diamond tears fell upon her, and one more splashed on the face of her child.  
  
As she prepared a portal in her child's nursery, Lily heard the terrifying sound of the door's wood freezing and cracking; a high, cold voice whispered something in an unknown language and it shattered like ice. She clutched her child in her arms, knowing precisely what would happen and what she had to do.  
  
Harry awoke that morning in horrible agony.That wasn't the unusual; he'd awoken nearly every morning that summer in pain. The strange thing was his dream. Everything had been clearer and more detailed in his mind than ever before, yet tantalizingly bewildering. What did these new bits of memory mean? Did they have anything to do with the visions of Voldemort's brutality he was cursed with every time he dared to sleep? Eyes closed, laying back on his bed, Harry attempted to hold on to the fragments of the dream which were slowly breaking off and floating away like icebergs in a frozen sea.  
  
."Harry, get down here and cook breakfast!" Aunt Petunia's shrill voice sounded from the kitchen downstairs.  
  
He sighed reluctantly and dragged himself from bed. His thoughts would have to wait until later, as Petunia invariably had a full day's work planned out for him every morning.  
  
"When you're done with breakfast," Aunt Petunia commanded Harry sharply from over his shoulder as he cracked boiled eggs and sliced a few peaches for his 'family's' breakfast, "I want you to mow the lawn, weed the garden, clean the patio and furniture, fill the birdbath, get out the good tea things, and go to the stor efor these things.(She shoved a grocery list into his face.)And you'd better be done by two because the Marshalls are coming for tea in the garden." Harry suppressed a sigh. "Yes, Aunt Petunia," he muttered, sliding a boiled egg out of its shell.Dudley's diet had been going well, and he was now allowed a boiled egg and a piece of fruit for breakfast. Sticking a slightly rotten apple in his pocket and biting into the boiled egg that had cracked in the pot, Harry escaped out the back door. At exactly one-forty-five pm, Harry was confined to his room and given the usual threats of closet and no meals lest he make a peep.He barely listened as his uncle growled at him.  
  
As Harry's uncle left the room, he gave a satisfied sigh. Vernon's tactics no longer frightened him; they were nothing in comparison to the brutality he witnessed almost every time he closed him eyes. 


	2. Serpentine Musings

"Have you ever wondered why you are so paranoid about Slytherins, Weasley?" Cho inquired angrily, bringing her voice lower. "Draco may have ulterior motives, but he is...he would not decieve us like that, you must believe me."  
  
"Suddenly a Malfoy expert, Cho?" Ron sneered sarcastically.  
  
Clearing his throat significantly, Harry gave both the redheads glares of death.  
  
Cho scowled at Ron deeply. "Whatever."  
  
~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~  
  
Sneering victoriously, Draco Malfoy touched the freckle on his left forearm with his index finger, and in his place there appeared a long, emerald green snake.  
  
"You are an idiot, father" he hissed, slithering into the gap between the floor and wall of his room. He had no intention of going back to Hogwarts tonight: not until Harry and Hermione, at least, were out of danger. The other two were disposable.  
  
As silently as possible, Draco manuvered behind the ancient walls of Malfoy manor, reflecting on his hate for the person he was so foolishly risking his life to save.  
  
Harry Potter- Draco was intelligent enough to grasp that he envied the heroic "Boy-Who-Lived." But, still, there was more to his dislike of Mr. Gryffindor than that. Surely his Anti-Potter upbringing helped, as would the rivalry between their two houses; it was foolish, of course, the Slytherin knew, but the rivalry existed nonetheless. Perhaps it was the boy's naivity; Potter's simple belief that the good would win, and his blind courage utterly disgusted one who knew better than to try and save everyone. Being a hero was sheer idiocy.  
  
But, everyone ,except we Slytherins, loves him for it, Draco mused angrily- but there it was again-Jealousy.  
  
"Shut up," he hissed in Parseltounge to his conscience, slithering unseen through an aquamarine portal in his father's study. "I don't need *you* pestering me right now." 


End file.
